


Looking for You

by mrsfrisby



Series: Only Me Beside You [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awesome Leia Organa, BB-8 as architect, F/M, Fluff, Kes Dameron is the best, Leia is a BAMF, M/M, Poe & Finn married, Post Episode IX, Slow Burn, Yavin 4, falling in love for the second time, feel the dire need to give Leia a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:49:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6337288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsfrisby/pseuds/mrsfrisby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia is retiring (at last) and take Kes Dameron up on his offer to stay with him until she finds a house of her own. But the more time they spend together--with Poe and Finn and on their own--the more she wonders if home has become where Kes is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking for You

**Author's Note:**

> The only thing he asked her to do was open a bottle of wine to drink for dinner. 
> 
> Unfortunately, she couldn’t get it open.
> 
> “Let me get this straight,” Kes said. “You can coordinate the demise of entire empires, but you can’t get the wine open?”
> 
> Leia’s eyebrow quirked up. “Do you really want to pose such a condescending question to a woman who can take down entire empires?”
> 
> Kes let out an amused little chuckle. “Maybe I don’t, at that,” he said.

1\. 

“It’ll only be for a few days,” she says, probably for the fourth time since she arrived on Yavin 4.

“Understood,” Kes replies. Probably for the fourth time since she arrived on Yavin 4. 

“And if you want me to leave before I find a house, you just have to say so,” she continues.

“Leia,” he says, stopping with all of her bags around him. “I invited you to stay with me, remember?”

“I might not be as young as I used to, Kes, but my memory is quite intact.”

He shoots her grin and then starts walking. “So, this is the transport to take all of your things back home,” he says handing bags over to a droid.

“But we’re not taking the transport,” she says. Nothing about it sounds like a question.

“No, we’re taking that,” Kes says, pointing to the edge of the space hub. In the distance, Leia sees a 74-Z speeder bike—the kind they hijacked from scout troopers during the battle of Endor.

Her jaw drops for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. “You don’t honestly expect me to get on that thing,” she says. But one look at his grinning face, and she knows that he does—and that he’s enjoying every moment of this. 

Well, two can play at that game, she thinks. She walks, very deliberately of course, over to the speeder bike and rearranges her long skirt to climb on board. “Well, are you coming?” she asks.

Kes’s grin only grows wider. “You’re driving?” he says.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you pilot this thing, did you? Not after the mess you made of them back on Endor,” she counters. 

“As I recall, you’re the one who crashed on one of these,” he replies with a smile.

“Which afforded me the chance to become friends with the ally who in turn helped us win the war,” she counters. Kes loves arguing about this particular ally and she knows it.

“Ah, Wicket,” he says with a shake of his head. “He always did have a soft spot for you.”

“Wise Ewok,” Leia says. She fits one of his old Republic helmets over her braids and starts the bike up. “Well, are you coming or aren’t you?”

With a shake of the head, Kes uses a mounting block to slowly climb on behind her and grabs the second helmet. “You know, I didn’t fix this old thing up to have other people take the controls,” he tells her.

She turns around and gives him a nonchalant shrug. “Actually, it turns out you did.” Leia revs the bike’s engine and peels out of the spaceway. Kes wraps his arms around her midsection. Just for safety, of course.

“There aren’t any Stormtroopers chasing you this time,” he calls out to her. “You could probably slow down.”

Her laugh whips back to him on the wind. “Just tell me which way to go, and I’ll get us there in no time.”

 

2.

Leia Organa is not one to cook. Once upon a time, Han had a kitchen installed on the Falcon for her as a “gift.” He regretted it instantly—and often. Not that she didn’t know how to cook back in the day. She did. She simply resented the implication that he expected her to. Besides, she’s spent so many years eating in military mess halls that she doesn’t even know what she’d do with a kitchen any more even if she had one.

Kes Dameron, on the other hand, happens to be an excellent cook. He actually baked bread last night, which they ate with fresh cheese (which he also made) and a salad (the vegetables for which he grew). The only thing he asked her to do was open a bottle of wine to drink for dinner. 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get it open.

“Let me get this straight,” Kes said. “You can coordinate the demise of entire empires, but you can’t get the wine open?”

Leia’s eyebrow quirked up. “Do you really want to pose such a condescending question to a woman who can take down entire empires?”

Kes let out an amused little chuckle. “Maybe I don’t, at that,” he said. But he hassled her about it anyway. Not that it kept her from enjoying the food. Or the wine. 

Then this morning, he used last night’s bread to make some kind of casserole for her that tasted of butter and warm spices. 

She may or may not have moaned in ecstasy when she first bit into it. 

When she saw the grin on Kes’s face, though, she made certain to keep her ecstatic noises to herself. No matter how delicious the warm, creamy cacao was that he served her afterward.

“You’re a good cook,” she begrudgingly tells him.

“And you’re a good eater,” he replies. She shoots him a look, and he realizes what he’s just said. “I mean, you’re a good audience,” he continues. “For my cooking. Would you call that being an audience?”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Then what would you call it?” he asks.

Leia thinks this over for a second. “I don’t think there’s a word that adequately describes it. At least not in any of the languages I know.”

He grins at her again. He’s getting rather profligate in his grinning. She suspects he knows she likes it when he does. “Then you, Leia, do not have a word that adequately describes you. At least not in any languages we know.”

She whacks him as he passes her in the kitchen to get some more cacao, but only very softly. Though he doesn’t ever act like it, she knows he’s been through a lot physically—and though she would never tell him this, she tries to be gentle with him. Much more so than she ever was with any of the soldiers who served under her in the Rebellion or the Resistance.

Come to think of it, he’s pretty gentle with her as well, so it works out nicely.

 

3\. 

Finn stops by with BB-8. Both of them are in a state of high excitability. 

“Poe flew out to pick up the last of the wood today,” he tells Leia and Kes. “Then we start the build out.”

BB-8 rolls around his feet, beeping madly, informing Leia that they would not be able to start building so soon if he hadn’t corrected all of their plans. 

Leia just laughs. “I don’t doubt it, BB-8,” she says. Then she looks at Finn. “I thought the little guy was going to stay here while you guys worked out the housing situation?” Leia says.

“He was,” Finn replies. “But he missed us too much.”

An outraged series of beeps rolls out of BB-8. “I know, I know,” Finn laughs. “We missed you, too, buddy.”

Finn’s clearly picked up the “buddy” thing from Poe. Their mannerisms and little quirks have worn well on each other and sometimes even merged. Even though she’s been present during the whole of their relationship, Leia is still a little in awe of what they have together—there’s all of the love she and Han used to share without any of the bickering and anger. 

“Besides which, he’s right,” Finn says, interrupting her thoughts. “We made some pretty shoddy building plans, and BB fixed everything up for us.”

The droid gives Finn a high five and then rolls against his leg affectionately. Finn reaches down and gives his hard dome of a head a pat. It occurs to Leia only in that moment that the house Finn and Poe are building won’t just be for themselves. Certainly, it will be for BB-8 as well, but watching Finn right now makes her think of other possibilities. Of children—Finn and Poe’s children. Kes’s grandchildren.

The idea fills her with both happiness and loneliness. She already lost Ben. Grandchildren are just not something she’s ever going to have in her life. 

She looks up to find Kes gazing at her, a serious look on his face. She knows he’s going to want to talk about this later, and she’d frankly like to do anything in her power to avoid discussing the fact that she’s jealous of his future grandchildren with him.

So as soon as Finn and BB-8 leave, she makes a mad (perhaps a desperate) suggestion. “Let’s go sightseeing,” she says to Kes. 

He raises one eyebrow, and pauses. Then he says, “Shall we take the speeder bike?”

“Do you honestly think I’m going to travel on anything else anymore?” she counters.

He grins again. She finds that she doesn’t mind that he knows (and she knows) how much she enjoys that grin.

 

4\. 

They don’t really go sightseeing—they go for a nostalgic jaunt instead. Nostalgia, it turns out, can be a complicated business.

Leia looks around the old Massassi temple and realizes that nothing has changed. And yet everything has. Yes, the old stone walls are still here—thick, solid, imposing. The remnants of the old equipment they had to abandon after the first Death Star met its end, but they still had to ultimately evacuate because the Empire knew exactly where they were, even if the Empire was licking its wounds.

She walks through the old command center, touching dark holoscreens and dust-ridden control panels as she goes. Leia shivers a little remembering the fear she once felt in this very room. The certainty that the Death Star was going to destroy the entire moon and all of the Rebellion with it—knowing as she stood there, careful not to show her fear to those around her even at that young age, that she was going to die in the exact same way her fellow Alderaanians did. 

Then she hears Kes’s footsteps behind her. 

“We were so young,” she says in a soft voice. “We thought we could save the world.”

“Leia, we did save the world,” he reminds her. “Just because it needed saving again, didn’t mean we didn’t do what we set out to the first time around.”

She shakes her head, but turns to smile at him. “We all paid a price,” she says, but she’s not saying anything he doesn’t already know. “Come with me, Kes. There’s one last place I want to see.”

Together, they walk into the grand open space that was the scene of their great triumph—or, at least, what they thought was their great triumph. The Death Star destroyed, the Empire irrevocably hurt. Little did they know at the time what an enormous fight still lay ahead of them.

She leaves Kes behind and walks up the stairs, counting them as she goes. Forty-nine, she huffs as she reaches the top. Then she turns and looks out over the vast, empty space below her. This is the very spot she stood on when she gave medals of honor to the man who she’d later learn is her brother and the man who became her husband.

Now the space is empty, echoing. She stands there, alone, for a moment, and then notices that Kes is walking down the chamber toward her. 

“I wish I could join you up there,” he calls, but she knows as well as he does that he would never be able to walk up all these steps. It’s the personal price he paid to the Rebellion.

“How many synthetic joints do you have now?” she asks, even though she’s well aware of the actual number. “Eight? Ten?”

“Seven,” he says. “Seven aren’t mine.” Thankfully he’s smiling as he says it. One of the many wonderful things about Kes is how philosophical he is about the sacrifices he made. A shoulder, an elbow, and a wrist all shattered in the same skirmish—as well as both hips, and the knee and ankle on his left side. They’ve all been replaced with bones and ligaments that aren’t his own. 

Leia smiles back at him and then slowly climbs back down the forty-nine stairs. 

“You’re practically man-made at this point, Kes,” she tells him.

“It’s more than the sum of his parts that makes a man,” he says with a shrug. “Or a woman of course.”

Then he holds out his arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “I want to show you the marketplace.”

She considers that. While the idea of shopping holds very little appeal, the idea of continuing to wear her military issue clothing in this hot, humid climate is even less appealing. “Fine, let’s go,” she agrees.

Arm in arm, they head back to his speeder bike. Leia takes the controls (she doesn’t even have to be tricky about it this time) while Kes is only too happy to hold onto her waist and go along for the ride.

 

5.

Kes has taken to sitting on the bed in the guestroom and watching, fascinated, as she does her hair each day. He tried once, a few days ago, to braid it for her but made such a mess of it that she shooed him away. 

At least that’s what she told him. There was really no reason for Leia to dwell on how good his fingers felt in her hair.

“Do you ever just wear it down?” Kes asks one night, as she works on her hair before the boys come over for dinner. “I understand why you did all that,” he gestures to her handiwork, “while you were still at war. But I do remember hearing you say that you’re retired now.”

Leia gives him a withering glance. “Whereas I do not remember asking you for fashion advice.”

Kes laughs out loud. “Nor would I offer any,” he says. “I was just hoping you could relax a little now that you’re here.”

“Let my hair down?” she replies archly. But Kes nods at her, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Yes, just so,” he says.

She nudges him out of the room and then keeps working on her hair. As she’s about to pin the many braids she’s created up around her head, though, she pauses. Then she runs her fingers through the braids, letting her hair fall loose around her shoulders. 

She looks in the mirror for a moment and then laughs quietly. “Why not?” she says. 

With just a single braid framing her face, she lets the rest stay just as is it. Her whole head feels lighter this way. She likes it. With the dress she bought in the marketplace earlier in the day—a soft, loose shift that feels like she’s wearing a cloud—and the hair, she feels younger somehow. She goes to put on her shoes, then kicks them under her bed. Kes never wears them in the house, and she’s beginning to understand why.

When she finally joins him the kitchen, he’s already prepping the food for dinner. The moment he sees her, though, he smiles—a huge, broad smile without even the tiniest hint of a grin in it. As if he’s genuinely delighted by her appearance.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

Leia shrugs. “I decided to let my hair down after all.”

A few minutes later, Poe and Finn and BB-8 arrive for dinner. Finn stops dead in his tracks when he sees Leia and she shoots Kes a withering glance.

“General, you look,” Finn stammers. “I mean…you just are….”

Poe lays a hand on his husband’s arm, and Finn stops talking. “What he means to say, is that you look lovely,” Poe says with a huge grin. “Life on this moon clearly suits you.”

Leia just rolls her eyes at him. “Save the Dameron charm for Finn,” she tells Poe. “I don’t know if I can handle anymore of it in one day.”

Kes and Poe both laugh out loud, but Finn looks at her sympathetically. “It can be a little overwhelming sometimes,” he tells her, but then he locks eyes with Poe and she can see that Finn doesn’t really mind being overwhelmed by the Dameron charm in the least.

Kes clears his throat. “Now that we have the discussion about what charming fellows we are out the way, how about something to drink?”

 

Poe and Finn both look fit and even a little tanned. Camping at the site of their future home is clearly agreeing with both of them. As she stretches her toes out in the moss outside the house, and listens to the boys talk about the house they’re building together and how Rey and Jess will be here in just a few more days, she realizes that being back on Yavin 4 really does suit her, too. She feels happy. And happy is an emotion she’s felt too sparingly in her adult life.

Kes laughs at something his son has said, and Leia smiles to hear the sound. There’s an uncomfortable notion tugging at the back of her mind that part of why she’s feeling so happy right now is because of him. Not that this is hugely surprising, of course—he is her old friend. But somehow it still is surprising. 

She watches him as he cooks on the outdoor stove he built out of local stone, chatting with the boys the whole time. He’s handsome in a completely different way than Poe. His once-dark hair has long since gone gray, as has the beard on his face. And while he’s less striking than Han was—he doesn’t have the cocky smile and reckless good looks—there’s something open and frank and kind about him that she’s always appreciated. He’s nice to look at, she realizes. And then she blushes viciously. When she realizes that Kes is glancing her way as if expecting her to say something, she blushes again.

“I’m afraid all this relaxation is going to my head,” she tells him. “I might have missed that last bit.”

He throws her an absolutely knock-out grin, and she rolls her eyes at him this time, trying to hide the heat rising in her cheeks. Then she sees Poe’s eyes flitting between the two of them questioningly.

Kes doesn’t seem to pick up on it at all. “I was just asking if you need more wine,” he says. “But maybe you’ve already had too much.”

“I definitely want more wine,” she tells him. “I think I’m going to need it tonight just to put up with you.”

A quiet laugh is his only response. Leia gets up to refill her glass, and when she finds the bottle is empty, she heads into Kes’s house to get another. As she struggles to open the new bottle, she hears footsteps behind her. 

“If you’ve left the food to burn out there just to come hassle me about not being able to open a wine bottle, there’s going to be hell to pay, Dameron,” she says without turning around.

“I don’t think I’m the Dameron you’re looking for,” says a voice behind her. But it’s Poe’s voice, not Kes’s. “But maybe I can help?” he asks, reaching for the bottle.

Leia hands it over to him. “All yours,” she replies. “Those damned things are impossible to open.”

But he pops the top off easily, giving lie to her words. “Hm,” she says. “Well, thanks for that.”

Poe takes her glass and refills it, then does the same for his own and Finn’s.

“How’s the house going?” she asks him.

“Slowly,” Poe says. “It’s going slowly. But neither of us thought we’d have it done any time soon.”

“You’re enjoying your time together out there, though,” Leia says, stating fact rather than asking a question.

“And you’re enjoying yours here,” he says in a soft voice. 

She looks up at him in surprise. “Poe, I….”

“Look, Leia,” he says, cutting her off in a way he would never have dared to when she was his commanding officer. “I just want to say that I’m…I’m really glad you’re here and that you and Dad are….”

“Poe, it’s not like that,” she protests, cutting him off in turn. 

Poe looks back out into the yard, and she follows his eyes toward Kes, who’s still hard at work cooking, but whose voice rises and falls as he and Finn talk about some crazy neighbor of theirs while BB-8 rolls around them happily.

When she looks back over at Poe, she realizes that he’s been watching her. “He’s been so happy since you got here,” Poe tells her. “And I want you to know that whatever it’s ‘like’ between you two, I’m one hundred percent behind it.” He looks out at his dad again. “He’s been alone for a long time.”

“So have I,” she says, the words slipping out before she thinks about what she’s just implied. 

But Poe just grins at her. Really, that grin needs to be reined in. And Finn’s never going to be the one to do it—if anything, he positively basks in it.

“Want to head back outside?” he asks her.

She nods and moves to leave, but he pulls her into a hug. When he steps away to pick up his wine glasses, he’s grinning again.

“Oh, put that thing away,” Leia says to him, making him laugh. 

“I’m just glad Finn never says that to me,” Poe says, a glint in his eyes.

“And I’m just going to pretend I didn’t just hear that last comment,” Leia says as she walks away from him. 

They join the others outside and together they drink and eat and talk the night away.

 

6.

After the boys have left, Leia helps Kes bring everything inside despite his protests.

“You’re a guest,” he tells her. “You’re not supposed to have to clean.”

“Well, your good for nothing son and his husband left without lifting a single finger to help,” she replies. “So somebody’s got to lend a hand.”

“You’re a guest,” he repeats, taking a dish from her. “Go sit down.”

Leia just laughs. “I’m not good at sitting down,” she tells him. “I’m better at working.”

“Weren’t you Alderaan royalty at one time or another?” he counters. “Shouldn’t you have this whole letting others wait on you thing down by now?”

She hands him another dish. “I went on my first mission for the Rebellion when I was fourteen, Kes,” she says. “It’s been a long military life.”

He turns and looks at her. “Well, now I definitely want you to sit down and relax,” he says. He gently bucks her hip with his and moves her out of the way. 

Without any further protest, she sits on one of the stools in his kitchen and takes a last sip of wine. “So, I found myself some work to do,” she tells Kes.

He looks up at her in surprise. “I thought you weren’t working any more,” he replies.

“I went to visit the refugee camp today, Kes,” Leia says. “There’s a lot to be done—so many people displaced by the war. I’m going to start volunteering there.”

Kes turns off the water in the sink and puts the dish in his hand down. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“I’m positive,” she tells him. “I can do good work there. Help those people settle into their new lives here. I’m a transplant, too, you know. Just one with more resources. But I can sympathize. I’ve got no where else to go, no home left to return to.” Her voice wavers just a little at her last words, which she hopes he doesn’t notice.

Being Kes, though, he does. Of course. He holds out a hand to her. 

“Come outside with me,” he says. She slips her hand into his and walks with him out onto the deck he built off the kitchen. For a moment, they stand side-by-side in silence.

Kes is the first to break it. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, then clears his throat. “And wondering if you wouldn’t just want to stay on here instead of finding a place of your own.”

Leia lets out an uncomfortable laugh. “I didn’t realize you were looking for a roommate, Kes,” she says. 

He touches her shoulder. “I’m not.”

She leans her cheek onto the back of his hand and looks at sky, trying to focus on the shadow of the planet itself that she can still see a hint of, and two of the other nearby moons glowing in the night sky.

“Then what are you looking for?” she asks in a low voice.

Kes’s hand runs up her shoulder and into her hair. “You,” he says. “I didn’t know it till I saw you again after all these years. But it’s definitely you, Leia.”

A shaky laugh releases from her chest and she turns to look at him at last. “It would appear that you found me, Kes,” she says.

His grin is even more dazzling than usual just before he bends down to kiss her. She wraps her arms around him and leans into him. 

“Will you stay?” he asks her, his voice barely a whisper.

Leia nods into his shoulder. “I’ll stay,” she says. “I’m glad you found me.”


End file.
